A convoy of conspiracy theorists from all countries, with the aim of a large gathering in Geneva on Saturday June 1st. For several weeks, circles known for the dissemination of fake news have been unleashed on social networks, around the hashtag #GenevaProject. Their objective: to disrupt the 77th World Health Assembly which started this Monday, May 27 and is taking place all week at the WHO headquarters, on the banks of Lake Geneva. An event where the draft global agreement on the prevention, preparation and response to pandemics must be discussed, as well as a revision of the international health regulations.
“It is not very surprising that this meeting arouses this type of reaction, because there are all the ingredients of conspiracy theories there: an international organization and discussions at the highest level, on a subject around which the actors have already structured since the pandemic”, notes Laurent Cordonier, sociologist and director of research at the Descartes Foundation. In fact, behind this “Geneva Project”, we find above all Trumpist groups and the American extreme right, many of which emerged during the health crisis.
One of the organizers of the movement is the “Brownstone Institute”, chaired by a certain Jeffrey Tucker, also an editorialist for Epoch Times, an alternative media linked to the Trump galaxy and very popular with European covid-sceptics. Among the headliners announced, we find Katarina Lindley, doctor and osteopath who relayed the calls for the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Dan Astin-Grégory, influencer and author of the conspiracy podcast The Pandemic podcast or Aseem Malhotra, British cardiologist and notorious anti-vaxxer, very active against the Pfizer vaccines.
Obviously eccentric and ultra-minority theories
As always, their speeches (“say no to the WHO”, “defend our freedoms and the future of humanity”…) are widely relayed by the French complosphere. With for example a video by Christian Perronne, which circulates a lot on social networks. The once respected infectious disease specialist who has been increasing blatant misinformation for several years calls for resistance in the face of “exorbitant powers that States are preparing to give to the Director General of the WHO”. Theses are circulating even on the markets in our country, as illustrated by a leaflet distributed a few weeks ago in the streets of Morlaix (Brittany), once again repeating the same threats of loss of sovereignty and the establishment of a “global health pass”…
Obviously crazy theories, and in the ultra-minority. “We are not at all in mass phenomena, even if their echo on social networks gives the impression that this is the case, confirms Laurent Cordonier. But the worrying aspect of this very vocal minority is its ability to introduce doubt among a wider segment of the population, as may have been the case during the pandemic.” During this period, the merits of vaccination or other health measures could thus be called into question on the basis of fallacious arguments. And these oppositions have even spilled over into real life, with threats against researchers or violent actions, such as the destruction of vaccination centers which in certain places may have disrupted access to injections.
However, the current discussions at the WHO are far removed from the scarecrows stirred up by the complosphere. Two negotiations have been carried out in parallel in recent months, which should reach their conclusion in the coming days. First, the revision of the International Health Regulations (IHR). This text, put in place shortly after the creation of the WHO, initially aimed to oblige member states to declare cases of a limited number of infectious diseases (plague, typhus, etc.). But with the emergence of new pathogens from the 1980s (AIDS, prion of bovine spongiform encephalitis, SARS in 2003), it ended up proving unsuitable, and was the subject of a major revision in 2005 “The discussion, which lasted around ten years, led to the idea of no longer fixing on a pre-established list of pathogens. This is how the concept of public health emergency was born. of international scope (USPPI)”, recalls Professor Didier Houssin, former Director General of Health in France, who chaired the Covid-19 health emergency committee at the WHO throughout the health crisis.
Very far from any loss of sovereignty
This new version of the RSI made it possible to manage epidemics such as Ebola in West Africa in 2014, or even Zika in Brazil in 2016. The Covid-19 pandemic, however, showed that it was necessary to adapt it again. “Today we are in a binary system: there is a USPPI or there is not one. However, at the start of the crisis, we would have needed an intermediate level,” indicates Professor Houssin. This point is at the heart of discussions today, as is the idea of delegating inspection powers to the WHO in the event of the emergence of a new epidemic. “If WHO representatives had been able to go to Wuhan very quickly, they would probably have been able to raise the alarm more quickly about human-to-human transmission,” recalls Professor Antoine Flahault, epidemiologist and director of the Institute of Global Health. at the University of Geneva.
At the same time, member states attempted to develop a “global agreement on prevention, preparedness and response to pandemics”, in addition to the IHR. “One of the most discussed elements of this draft agreement concerns the question of a possible lifting of patents on vaccines, tests and medicines during a period of epidemic emergency, with the aim of facilitating access to all populations, including in the countries of the South, to these technologies”, explains Professor Flahault. The question of the WHO’s control and police powers, which the institution currently lacks, could also be debated in this context. On the condition that the discussions continue: at this stage, the negotiators have not managed to reach an agreement, and it is now up to the Assembly to decide whether or not to continue the discussions.
In any case, we remain very far from any loss of sovereignty dictated by an international institution, since the powers available to the WHO are those that the member states are willing to delegate to it. “And in this case, they remain very limited because health is a very sensitive subject, over which governments largely want to keep control,” recalls Professor Flahault. To the point that some even fear that the current negotiations will instead lead to setbacks.
Under these conditions, would it be possible to limit the spread of this type of fake news ? Although debunking is useful, it does not actually appear to be the most effective. “The WHO would have a lot to gain from doing ‘pre-bunking’, by anticipating the untruths which will inevitably accompany events like the World Health Assembly”, underlines Laurent Cordonier. This involves deciphering false information in advance, and providing factual explanations for future events. Messages which can then be taken up on social networks by all those who fight against disinformation. “It is completely demonstrated in experimental studies that in the absence of prior information on a given subject, we will have a tendency to defend the first point of view encountered,” indicates the sociologist. A method that could limit the harmful capabilities of the complosphere. On condition that the institutions concerned, like the WHO, know how to take charge…
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